WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:01.000 Okay. 00:01.000 --> 00:02.000 All right. 00:02.000 --> 00:18.200 All right, I think this is the audience we're going to get, so I'm going to just go ahead 00:18.200 --> 00:19.200 with it. 00:19.200 --> 00:21.960 I always record my own speeches in case there are views later. 00:21.960 --> 00:24.840 So it's a tip for you. 00:24.840 --> 00:28.600 If you're ever doing a presentation and you're concerned because you have less people than 00:28.600 --> 00:33.640 you'd hoped, you just record your own speech and it becomes a part of your portfolio or 00:33.640 --> 00:35.120 a part of your own training tape. 00:35.120 --> 00:37.360 So there's an actual advantage to it either way. 00:37.360 --> 00:41.480 So for the 20 of you who decided to come here tonight, I appreciate that a lot. 00:41.480 --> 00:43.120 My name is Jason Scott. 00:43.120 --> 00:46.120 I am one of the organizers of Block Party. 00:46.120 --> 00:49.640 I have a history fetish. 00:49.640 --> 00:55.640 I'm very much into collecting history, historical artifacts, and computers. 00:55.640 --> 01:00.120 And a side effect of that is that I found myself doing presentations for people. 01:00.120 --> 01:03.720 I would go to places where they would say, could you come in and talk about your subject 01:03.720 --> 01:04.720 of interest? 01:04.720 --> 01:09.480 And I took to it like a fish to water, really enjoyed it. 01:09.480 --> 01:13.840 And over the past decade and a half, I've probably done something on the order of 40 01:13.840 --> 01:18.360 or 50 presentations, speeches, and that sort of thing. 01:18.360 --> 01:23.480 And I come from a training background in performing arts. 01:23.480 --> 01:30.080 I went to a school called Emerson College in Boston where I was a performer, I was a 01:30.080 --> 01:34.040 radio person, I was a magazine editor, I was a bunch of things. 01:34.040 --> 01:39.040 So I came from that background and there were things that we were taught as a matter of 01:39.040 --> 01:45.080 course that are simply not taught in other locations, in other schools, in other places. 01:45.080 --> 01:50.480 And people come up through different realms and find themselves on a stage talking to 01:50.480 --> 01:55.360 people to various degrees of terror, misery, happiness, or whatever. 01:55.360 --> 02:03.000 So I asked the organizers if perhaps the night before we went into another round of presentations 02:03.000 --> 02:07.400 given at Noticon that I would have something that I could give just to give some people 02:07.400 --> 02:08.840 some pointers. 02:08.840 --> 02:14.320 So anybody who's a presenter here for this weekend, it's specifically for you, but anybody 02:14.320 --> 02:18.240 else who's kind of interested in some of the work that goes on behind the scenes when you 02:18.240 --> 02:23.640 have a person up here, this speech will work for you as well. 02:23.640 --> 02:30.240 So when I start this out, I thank you. 02:30.240 --> 02:35.800 And the reason I thank you is because any presentation represents an investment of time 02:35.800 --> 02:36.800 by people. 02:36.800 --> 02:42.720 In fact, if you look at it even more mathematically, it's the investment of time by each person 02:42.720 --> 02:48.680 in the room sitting for the period of time that you are talking times the number of people. 02:48.680 --> 02:52.160 And that is a lot of time depending on your audience. 02:52.160 --> 02:56.600 This is an investment that some people make likely if they're young and less if they're 02:56.600 --> 02:57.600 old. 02:57.600 --> 02:59.560 We all know we're going to end up in the ground. 02:59.560 --> 03:04.560 And to spend some of that time in a boring or uninformative or unentertaining speech is 03:04.560 --> 03:10.980 a personal insult to me because you have people who could be doing anything else and here 03:10.980 --> 03:12.220 they are with you. 03:12.220 --> 03:16.160 So I initially always thank people for coming because of that. 03:16.160 --> 03:19.480 So if that sounds a little weighty, I understand. 03:19.480 --> 03:23.640 But it's the weight I like to think about these things. 03:23.640 --> 03:31.480 The speech that you're going to get today is basically a technical presentation. 03:31.480 --> 03:33.160 That is to say I'm giving you facts. 03:33.160 --> 03:35.340 But there's all sorts of presentations out there. 03:35.340 --> 03:42.480 So when you say presentation, you could as well be saying writing or recording or anything 03:42.480 --> 03:43.480 else. 03:43.480 --> 03:46.360 It's a very, very general term. 03:46.360 --> 03:50.440 And people will say, oh, I did a presentation without telling you more. 03:50.440 --> 03:52.000 And it could be anything. 03:52.000 --> 03:56.160 For instance, if you have a person who has an item and the whole purpose of why they're 03:56.160 --> 03:59.680 up here is to show you the item, that's basically a demonstration. 03:59.680 --> 04:03.880 They're basically going to show you this neat item that they've created. 04:03.880 --> 04:06.560 And everything else they say is primarily chowder. 04:06.560 --> 04:09.600 It's primarily there just to make you feel like you're talking to somebody who knows 04:09.600 --> 04:10.600 what they're talking about. 04:10.600 --> 04:12.500 But what everyone wants to see is the item. 04:12.500 --> 04:15.760 This is especially the case if that has been promoted. 04:15.760 --> 04:20.480 On the other hand, you might have somebody who has discovered something new or has a 04:20.480 --> 04:22.040 knowledge of a certain subject. 04:22.040 --> 04:26.960 And people are here because they want that person who is an expert to give them a little 04:26.960 --> 04:27.960 bit of that expertise. 04:27.960 --> 04:32.660 So they feel like they're part of that person's progress. 04:32.660 --> 04:35.360 And they feel like they're going to benefit from it. 04:35.360 --> 04:39.000 Other times, you have people who are here because of a requirement. 04:39.000 --> 04:44.040 That is to say, for instance, they are paid by their company to go to a number of speeches. 04:44.040 --> 04:48.160 At these speeches, they have to take notes to take back to the company, or the company 04:48.160 --> 04:50.760 won't reimburse them for their expenses. 04:50.760 --> 04:57.360 This audience is extremely tough because either they don't care or they really feel pressured 04:57.360 --> 04:59.520 to write down what you're doing. 04:59.520 --> 05:03.480 And if they don't find any meat there, they feel like they're just automatons who are 05:03.480 --> 05:08.480 really there because it's in a city that has something they want to go to, like a bar or 05:08.480 --> 05:12.760 an event or a party, and they're just doing this to pass the time. 05:12.760 --> 05:14.760 All of these are different audiences. 05:14.760 --> 05:17.240 What we have here is a hacker con audience. 05:17.240 --> 05:22.480 And hacker cons have an interesting history because initially they were just large parties, 05:22.480 --> 05:27.100 parties put on by hackers in someone's backyard, a bunch of people hanging out. 05:27.100 --> 05:32.120 It was the newness of having people that you only knew online come spend time with you 05:32.120 --> 05:33.120 in person. 05:33.120 --> 05:36.320 That was the core reason to do it. 05:36.320 --> 05:42.640 Now presentations as a medium, that is to say a person on the stage giving you information, 05:42.640 --> 05:49.120 whether for their own needs or yours, has been going on for many, many hundreds of years. 05:49.120 --> 05:53.840 In this extreme formalized setting where there's a professional location that's designed that 05:53.840 --> 05:59.640 today we're a hacker con, tomorrow we're a social media con, the day after, that's relatively 05:59.640 --> 06:03.080 newer, this more industrialized version. 06:03.080 --> 06:08.940 And you have to keep that in your mind when you're presenting that you're in a very artificial 06:08.940 --> 06:13.080 space that isn't really designed for performing. 06:13.080 --> 06:19.840 So in a hacker con speech, this starts to rise up really in the 1990s. 06:19.840 --> 06:24.880 There's a few 1980s versions, but what it came down to was instead of having these in 06:24.880 --> 06:30.160 people's backyards, we could have them in hotels because people could have good rooms then. 06:30.160 --> 06:36.160 And then we could have a kind of communion space where people give ideas. 06:36.160 --> 06:41.560 And a lot of times those could be very loose because it was the pure joy of being able 06:41.560 --> 06:47.600 to be in front of people and talk to them about what you were doing that was more than 06:47.600 --> 06:51.120 enough for a presenter. 06:51.120 --> 06:53.360 In other vocations, that's not the case. 06:53.360 --> 06:58.040 A presenter will expect to be paid or have their travel expenses reimbursed. 06:58.040 --> 07:04.360 They will be given access to an unbelievably expensive location like say the TED speeches, 07:04.360 --> 07:09.240 which are thousands of dollars to attend, simply by being able to attend for free, you've 07:09.240 --> 07:11.160 actually saved thousands of dollars. 07:11.160 --> 07:14.120 So in some ways you can still be paid that way. 07:14.120 --> 07:18.160 Hacker cons, by their very nature, don't make the money that other cons do. 07:18.160 --> 07:20.760 They don't tend towards that. 07:20.760 --> 07:26.760 As a result, the people who presented hacker cons are primarily people who are going to 07:26.760 --> 07:31.560 get in for free as their primary method of payment. 07:31.560 --> 07:32.920 And this is critical to understand. 07:32.920 --> 07:37.720 This means that the person who's up here may or may not be up here because they want to 07:37.720 --> 07:40.680 be, but may be up here because they have to be. 07:40.680 --> 07:45.560 And I tell you that if you've ever been through a speech where the person up here wants to 07:45.560 --> 07:52.120 be here less than you, it is excruciating because there's no planning, there's no effort 07:52.120 --> 07:58.600 to really get things out, and they rely solely on their general knowledge froth to kind of 07:58.600 --> 08:00.080 give things to you. 08:00.080 --> 08:07.000 Obviously, if a person is so famous or has shown themselves to be of such quality that 08:07.000 --> 08:12.400 just being near them is kind of enjoyable, that sometimes is a great time, and there 08:12.400 --> 08:14.640 are certainly people who give speeches that way. 08:14.640 --> 08:18.760 But there's a lot of convention space that's taken up now by people who are presenting 08:18.760 --> 08:24.560 things that they did at school or have kind of half remixed things they read online in 08:24.560 --> 08:30.640 the past couple of months, and that they're mostly motivated to finish the speech and 08:30.640 --> 08:34.600 get on to being an attendee. 08:34.600 --> 08:40.120 Concussion is one of the most important things that I want to get along to you. 08:40.120 --> 08:45.680 The question that I always ask in any kind of an endeavor that I do is why. 08:45.680 --> 08:48.040 Why are you here? 08:48.040 --> 08:50.200 Why am I here? 08:50.200 --> 08:53.040 Why would people want to come to this? 08:53.040 --> 08:55.760 Why would I speak about this versus anything else? 08:55.760 --> 09:00.480 Tomorrow, I'm giving a presentation on Mario 64. 09:00.480 --> 09:03.360 I had a number of subjects I could have gone through. 09:03.360 --> 09:07.480 Part of it is because Noticon does not pay me, and part of it was because I was kind 09:07.480 --> 09:10.280 of intrigued by this very unusual idea. 09:10.280 --> 09:14.240 So I tend to use Noticon as a place to do very experimental speeches. 09:14.240 --> 09:16.760 I did one speech where I never left a chair. 09:16.760 --> 09:22.240 I did one speech where the person who was presenting it was dead. 09:22.240 --> 09:27.400 I presented a few other interesting experiments to simply try them out and see what would 09:27.400 --> 09:28.400 go on. 09:28.400 --> 09:30.520 I put effort into them, but they were experimental. 09:30.520 --> 09:31.520 Same thing with tomorrow. 09:31.520 --> 09:39.600 I'm giving a speech where I think that Mario 64 is one of the most important events in 09:39.600 --> 09:45.760 computing history and try to then take that thesis and demonstrate it, both through the 09:45.760 --> 09:47.560 game and citing history. 09:47.560 --> 09:52.920 This may or may not be interesting, but I think that it will be. 09:52.920 --> 09:58.680 And so the people who come who are there to see a Super Mario speech and wonder about 09:58.680 --> 10:04.760 this part of their history will get something out of it, will be informed, will also perhaps 10:04.760 --> 10:06.120 learn something they didn't. 10:06.120 --> 10:07.840 So that's where I work from. 10:07.840 --> 10:13.840 When a person works on a speech, say, about a project that they're working on, the reason 10:13.840 --> 10:19.480 they're doing it is because they either want more information from people or they're really 10:19.480 --> 10:25.040 proud of it or they simply think that it can't hurt. 10:25.040 --> 10:31.440 The audience may be here simply because there's another event happening in the room before 10:31.440 --> 10:37.520 and they've stayed, or there's a room event afterwards that's so popular that by staying 10:37.520 --> 10:42.160 in the room, and the convention has a policy of that, they don't clear the room. 10:42.160 --> 10:46.080 Some conventions, because of the mass of people, will clear the room. 10:46.080 --> 10:48.120 And so you don't have this case. 10:48.120 --> 10:51.920 But sometimes people are here simply because they've got nowhere else to go. 10:51.920 --> 10:55.480 And those people are only going to peripherally spend time with your speech. 10:55.480 --> 10:58.920 In fact, they're going to probably be your worst critics because they're going to concentrate 10:58.920 --> 11:01.160 on the parts that a lot of people don't. 11:01.160 --> 11:02.880 Why is Jason walking back and forth? 11:02.880 --> 11:05.080 Why is he wearing that funny goddamn hat? 11:05.080 --> 11:06.240 What's up with the sideburns? 11:06.240 --> 11:07.640 Why does he look formal? 11:07.640 --> 11:10.440 Why isn't there any sort of a PowerPoint presentation? 11:10.440 --> 11:11.840 Why are the lights up? 11:11.840 --> 11:15.520 They're looking at the whole zeitgeist of your performance. 11:15.520 --> 11:20.920 And that's fine with me, who might spend some time preparing for that. 11:20.920 --> 11:25.760 But other people, what they might not realize is they're actually doing two presentations. 11:25.760 --> 11:30.280 They're doing the presentation over here on this thing, coming across this way. 11:30.280 --> 11:35.400 And they're putting it on a laptop and looking down at their laptop while this event goes 11:35.400 --> 11:37.960 on over here on this projector. 11:37.960 --> 11:40.920 And they may not have spent any time understanding the room. 11:40.920 --> 11:47.240 And so what people see out there is an extremely unhappy guy, aimed down this way, doing this, 11:47.240 --> 11:48.240 looking up a little bit. 11:48.240 --> 11:52.640 And you can get away with that for a while, because the person may be doing something 11:52.640 --> 11:55.240 so brilliant, everyone wants to see it. 11:55.240 --> 12:04.000 But for a lot of people, it ends up becoming a rote reading of a series of hard-to-read 12:04.000 --> 12:07.960 slides to an indifferent audience. 12:07.960 --> 12:14.720 And while that's fine, if your entire reason for being there is to get through the hour, 12:14.720 --> 12:20.080 I really do contend that a modicum of work and preparation will make your speech that 12:20.080 --> 12:23.280 much better. 12:23.280 --> 12:29.040 The audience location, size, feeds into it. 12:29.040 --> 12:33.920 I always make a point when I kind of walk into the room when I come into a speech. 12:33.920 --> 12:38.920 So if I know it's going to be here today, the first thing I do when I get here is try 12:38.920 --> 12:41.080 to figure out which room am I going to speak in. 12:41.080 --> 12:42.080 And I walk into the room. 12:42.080 --> 12:44.080 And I know immediately if there's going to be problems. 12:44.080 --> 12:47.920 Is there going to be sunlight coming through here? 12:47.920 --> 12:51.040 Are there lights that are adequate to show me? 12:51.040 --> 12:52.560 Will my connection work out? 12:52.560 --> 12:57.040 Can I put my laptop on right now and make sure that it's working? 12:57.040 --> 13:02.280 Can I spend that time, that 20 minutes beforehand, maybe a day beforehand, and make sure everything 13:02.280 --> 13:05.880 that I present here is what's going to work? 13:05.880 --> 13:07.280 A lot of people don't. 13:07.280 --> 13:09.080 They walk in cold. 13:09.080 --> 13:11.880 And very few people can walk in cold. 13:11.880 --> 13:16.640 You've got to have an unbelievably well-prepared speech to walk in cold, where you expect them 13:16.640 --> 13:20.960 to walk up to that microphone, and it's going to work, and you slam in, and you're going. 13:20.960 --> 13:25.160 If you watch most of the professionals, either they have someone before them who does it, 13:25.160 --> 13:29.480 or they themselves have done it hours beforehand. 13:29.480 --> 13:33.000 When a person pulls a rabbit out of a hat, people go, wow, but they don't understand. 13:33.000 --> 13:36.280 You had to hide the bunny there hours beforehand. 13:36.280 --> 13:38.360 And so hiding the bunny is critical. 13:38.360 --> 13:41.080 You want to work on all your hard stuff beforehand. 13:41.080 --> 13:45.320 If you find out at the same time that the audience does that something doesn't work, 13:45.320 --> 13:50.360 it reflects poorly on you, and the audience loses you. 13:50.360 --> 13:53.680 I also try to find out how many people I'm speaking to. 13:53.680 --> 13:56.720 I have a talent for speaking in front of groups of people. 13:56.720 --> 14:03.600 I know that there's a statistic out there that most people are more afraid of public 14:03.600 --> 14:05.800 speaking than death. 14:05.800 --> 14:12.320 First of all, I don't agree, but we'll say it's probably third or fourth that they're 14:12.320 --> 14:16.040 afraid of public speaking, and somewhere up there is you die. 14:16.040 --> 14:22.560 But when a person is public speaking, they may or may not be able to look at this room 14:22.560 --> 14:25.160 as a performance space. 14:25.160 --> 14:29.320 They may look at it as an audition. 14:29.320 --> 14:32.680 In other words, they look at this audience, and they say, oh, God, all these people are 14:32.680 --> 14:33.680 evaluating me. 14:33.680 --> 14:34.680 What am I going to do? 14:34.680 --> 14:38.320 I'm going to do it, and it reflects in the body language, whereas I'm very comfortable 14:38.320 --> 14:39.320 with it. 14:39.320 --> 14:45.640 I ran for the school presidency in high school knowing full well I wouldn't win, simply for 14:45.640 --> 14:52.000 the joy of the fact that the entire school had to listen to me for 10 minutes for my 14:52.000 --> 14:54.400 speech, and I had an awesome time. 14:54.400 --> 14:59.800 I just got up and just started making them do the wave, and I composed digital clocks 14:59.800 --> 15:05.440 in the classrooms, and I demanded an on-campus McDonald's, and I did all these wonderful 15:05.440 --> 15:06.440 things. 15:06.440 --> 15:07.760 This was in 11th grade. 15:07.760 --> 15:12.040 In 12th grade, I had my ass kicked, absolutely kicked. 15:12.040 --> 15:14.880 I went to run for it again, because what the heck? 15:14.880 --> 15:19.040 It was fun last year, and there was a kid who presented before me. 15:19.040 --> 15:20.520 His name was David Mechner. 15:20.520 --> 15:25.880 David Mechner's brother is Jordan Mechner, who created Prince of Persia, and the Mechner 15:25.880 --> 15:28.200 family was a part of my high school. 15:28.200 --> 15:31.240 David also ran on a joke ticket. 15:31.240 --> 15:35.160 David's platform was brilliant. 15:35.160 --> 15:36.960 It was satirical. 15:36.960 --> 15:37.960 It was subtle. 15:37.960 --> 15:39.960 Here was his platform. 15:39.960 --> 15:41.600 Hello, students. 15:41.600 --> 15:48.080 I know that most of you fear coming back to your school in the years hence when you're 15:48.080 --> 15:53.120 older and feeling nostalgic, and you find that it's all changed. 15:53.120 --> 15:54.120 Everything's different. 15:54.120 --> 15:59.200 Everything is not where you remember it, and you no longer feel connected to our wonderful 15:59.200 --> 16:00.800 Horace Greeley High School. 16:00.800 --> 16:05.640 I promise you as school president that I will change nothing. 16:05.640 --> 16:07.520 I will enact no actions. 16:07.520 --> 16:13.720 I will commit no crimes against the memory of this place by doing anything. 16:13.720 --> 16:16.000 By voting for me, you vote for nothing. 16:16.000 --> 16:19.560 It was brilliant, and I was on after him. 16:19.560 --> 16:20.560 What could I do? 16:20.560 --> 16:28.080 The answer was I nosedived, totally nosedived, got up there, got nervous, but the nervousness 16:28.080 --> 16:30.400 wasn't that I was facing 1,200 people. 16:30.400 --> 16:36.440 The nervousness was I was facing 1,200 people with nothing, and that's the fear for me. 16:36.440 --> 16:38.320 My fear is not speaking in front of people. 16:38.320 --> 16:43.240 It's speaking in front of people and realizing I am absorbing all that wonderful time, all 16:43.240 --> 16:47.720 that living from people for nothing, and all they're going to remember was I was a douche 16:47.720 --> 16:49.720 for 10 minutes. 16:49.720 --> 16:59.080 However, I have never forgotten that, and that has been over 20 years ago, and I never 16:59.080 --> 17:05.440 walked up on stage without at least having something in my back pocket to make sure that 17:05.440 --> 17:11.520 I could present something cohesive to some extent as opposed to wing it. 17:11.520 --> 17:16.360 A similar lesson happened to me just a few years ago where I presented at OSCON, the 17:16.360 --> 17:23.320 open source convention in Portland, where it wasn't quite portrayed to me what I was 17:23.320 --> 17:24.520 going to be presenting for. 17:24.520 --> 17:26.600 I was only presenting a room of this size. 17:26.600 --> 17:30.000 I kind of knew that, but unfortunately I couldn't see the room. 17:30.000 --> 17:34.560 They did a very brilliant thing, which we've just done a version of here. 17:34.560 --> 17:39.160 They would have a remixed keynote every morning. 17:39.160 --> 17:47.200 For one hour, five people would present 10-minute speeches from random points in the day, and 17:47.200 --> 17:52.680 you would show up at 9 o'clock, and from 9 to 10 you would get to sit through essentially 17:52.680 --> 17:54.520 five reduced speeches. 17:54.520 --> 18:00.560 This would perhaps, in a place that had multiple tracks, five tracks, you might say, oh my 18:00.560 --> 18:05.000 goodness, that boringly titled person is actually fascinating. 18:05.000 --> 18:06.680 I want to know more about that guy. 18:06.680 --> 18:12.880 It was a wonderful idea for cross-pollination because it's so easy to just browse these 18:12.880 --> 18:18.760 summaries of a person's talk and make a judgment and to see the person anyway. 18:18.760 --> 18:28.200 The thing was, this remix was to the entire convening body of the entire convention. 18:28.200 --> 18:32.440 I had assumed I was going to do a 40-person speech, and when I walked into the back of 18:32.440 --> 18:39.920 the room, I learned a little thing, which was any room that requires seven projectors 18:39.920 --> 18:43.920 to project to the audience is fucking huge. 18:43.920 --> 18:49.720 There were 3,700 people there, the largest speech I'd ever been at, and I hadn't prepared 18:49.720 --> 18:55.880 for it because I had been planning to give a reduced version of my current speech and 18:55.880 --> 19:00.840 wing it because I was under the impression it was just kind of a short coffee-clatch 19:00.840 --> 19:01.840 interview. 19:01.840 --> 19:06.040 Now bear in mind, this was something to the level that each speaker was assigned three 19:06.040 --> 19:08.720 people for this. 19:08.720 --> 19:13.400 We each had three people who would come up to us by the side, who would prepare us, wire 19:13.400 --> 19:15.080 us up, get us ready. 19:15.080 --> 19:16.260 This was the big league. 19:16.260 --> 19:22.020 This was my chance to shine, and I blew it because I got up there and I did okay. 19:22.020 --> 19:23.800 I can wing like anybody else. 19:23.800 --> 19:27.800 I have a certain presence, and that presence comes across to an audience, and I can expand 19:27.800 --> 19:31.720 it, but a 3,500-person audience is not the same entity. 19:31.720 --> 19:33.080 I can hear you laugh. 19:33.080 --> 19:35.360 I can figure out which one of you is responding this way. 19:35.360 --> 19:38.800 I can look at your body language in this room right now and see which of you are here because 19:38.800 --> 19:40.200 you want to and which ones you don't. 19:40.200 --> 19:41.200 I study my audience. 19:41.200 --> 19:42.960 It's part of why the lights are on. 19:42.960 --> 19:49.960 But in a 3,500-person audience, any emotion you blow out to there will just be absorbed. 19:49.960 --> 19:51.360 This is a problem musicians have. 19:51.360 --> 19:53.520 You perform to a stadium. 19:53.520 --> 19:54.640 There's nothing. 19:54.640 --> 19:58.880 You do something incredible, and they just take it. 19:58.880 --> 20:04.160 You have this thriving mass of humanity that could not care less about you, or it feels 20:04.160 --> 20:05.160 like that. 20:05.160 --> 20:10.040 When they do get angry or they do get excited, you're just affected by it. 20:10.040 --> 20:15.680 When I would make a joke, my joke would literally ripple through the audience and bring it back. 20:15.680 --> 20:18.160 I feel always that I blew it. 20:18.160 --> 20:20.280 People who might watch it might go, well, you seemed okay. 20:20.280 --> 20:21.280 You seemed like you were together. 20:21.280 --> 20:24.480 I'm like, yeah, but I wasn't on top of it. 20:24.480 --> 20:28.680 Being on top of the game, being on top of things, that's why. 20:28.680 --> 20:29.680 I do it. 20:29.680 --> 20:31.040 I want this to be better. 20:31.040 --> 20:35.720 I want the audience to be better for when I speak, and I want to be better at the end 20:35.720 --> 20:36.720 when I speak. 20:36.720 --> 20:40.600 If I fail, failure is fine. 20:40.600 --> 20:42.320 Failure is a start. 20:42.320 --> 20:46.280 Failure is your example to yourself of what not to do later. 20:46.280 --> 20:52.080 If you treat everything as the end-all, be-all, then you will be in a constant state of misery, 20:52.080 --> 20:53.580 and that's in life in general. 20:53.580 --> 20:56.240 If your first demo sucks, it sucks. 20:56.240 --> 21:00.880 If your first article you get published in a paper is boring and somebody points out 21:00.880 --> 21:04.960 a central error in the thesis, that's not the end of your writing career. 21:04.960 --> 21:06.960 That's the beginning of your writing career. 21:06.960 --> 21:11.960 Similarly, when you give a speech, it pays to look at the recordings of yourself, to 21:11.960 --> 21:16.920 look at your presentation style, to say to yourself, do I even want to watch this? 21:16.920 --> 21:22.920 If you can't watch yourself, people might have a little bit of displeasure seeing their 21:22.920 --> 21:28.120 body language from the external, but if you can't even turn it to the audio and listen 21:28.120 --> 21:34.920 to yourself, then I don't know how you expected the audience to sit through it without a laptop 21:34.920 --> 21:38.120 and a PBA for them to Twitter how much you suck. 21:38.120 --> 21:44.120 You're going to end up being a screen saver at the top of the stage. 21:44.120 --> 21:47.920 You're the thing kind of running that's kind of amusing and an automaton that's not really 21:47.920 --> 21:52.120 interesting, and boy, when do we get to three o'clock? 21:52.120 --> 21:58.640 So in terms of audiences, besides this one, which I said was a hackathon audience, you 21:58.640 --> 22:01.360 have a whole division of them. 22:01.360 --> 22:02.360 You have an academic audience. 22:02.360 --> 22:06.880 An academic audience is there because they are ostensibly trying to learn things from 22:06.880 --> 22:07.880 each other. 22:07.880 --> 22:12.040 So their speeches tend to be very info-dense, they tend to have a lot of information in 22:12.040 --> 22:14.600 them and the people who are there are being given it. 22:14.600 --> 22:21.520 I happen to think that's terribly and utterly inefficient and a real waste and primarily 22:21.520 --> 22:25.000 a way for people to drink and see each other, which means I think that they should be really 22:25.000 --> 22:27.320 short introduction speeches. 22:27.320 --> 22:32.800 We're so lucky now in 2009 that your speech can be the front end, the beautiful polished 22:32.800 --> 22:36.820 front end to a complete idea set on a website. 22:36.820 --> 22:43.200 You can create all of your ideas, all of your examples, all of your wonderful endless boring 22:43.200 --> 22:48.180 ass stories and put them all on your website where people can browse them and read them 22:48.180 --> 22:55.320 at their own leisure and that this 40 minute, 15 minute presentation can be a really well 22:55.320 --> 23:00.840 rehearsed, really exciting idea set for what's going to come later. 23:00.840 --> 23:03.920 It's just such an opportunity that we have now. 23:03.920 --> 23:04.920 Previously you couldn't do that. 23:04.920 --> 23:09.920 In the 1800s, during the great exposition, you basically had to show your wares and try 23:09.920 --> 23:12.880 to convince people walking by that they should get this. 23:12.880 --> 23:15.360 Not much more than a Broadway barker. 23:15.360 --> 23:19.960 But now we have so much wonderful information going on and so much of a wonderful network 23:19.960 --> 23:20.960 set up. 23:20.960 --> 23:23.800 It's so much more of an opportunity. 23:23.800 --> 23:28.080 For me, I think of this all as just this exciting ability. 23:28.080 --> 23:33.200 In an academic situation, you're trying to push into the audience as much of a lecture 23:33.200 --> 23:38.120 as possible and they're like a class that you're never going to get again. 23:38.120 --> 23:39.120 Your students have assembled. 23:39.120 --> 23:42.480 You're going to teach them and they're never going to come back and you're never going 23:42.480 --> 23:45.200 to be able to really test them. 23:45.200 --> 23:48.120 It's okay but not great. 23:48.120 --> 23:49.120 You have an indifferent audience. 23:49.120 --> 23:53.280 An indifferent audience is an audience that's there because they have to be or because something's 23:53.280 --> 23:55.680 coming afterwards or before. 23:55.680 --> 23:59.800 They're not really there for you. 23:59.800 --> 24:03.080 You have to be there at least for yourself because they'll pick up on that. 24:03.080 --> 24:08.440 A person who's there because they are indifferent will translate even worse to an indifferent 24:08.440 --> 24:09.920 audience. 24:09.920 --> 24:12.000 You have chums and buddies. 24:12.000 --> 24:15.920 People who are here where you're at a speech and there's 20 people and eight of them know 24:15.920 --> 24:18.920 you personally. 24:18.920 --> 24:22.080 I've given enough speeches that I have people come to the speeches on the strength of my 24:22.080 --> 24:26.840 name and that's fine but I don't do it for them. 24:26.840 --> 24:29.040 I do different kinds of speeches. 24:29.040 --> 24:31.240 Like a performance, they go, oh, that Jason Scott speech sucked. 24:31.240 --> 24:32.240 Oh, that one was pretty good. 24:32.240 --> 24:38.320 It was really much better before I had a band or a company. 24:38.320 --> 24:39.920 That's a different kind of audience too. 24:39.920 --> 24:44.040 The problem, the danger is that you can end up playing to them. 24:44.040 --> 24:45.480 You have people in the audience you know. 24:45.480 --> 24:46.480 They're your buddies. 24:46.480 --> 24:48.480 Then you just start using language. 24:48.480 --> 24:50.120 You use terms. 24:50.120 --> 24:53.800 You use all sorts of shortcuts because your buddies are there and you don't want them 24:53.800 --> 24:57.560 to sit through the basics. 24:57.560 --> 25:01.640 The rest of your audience feels like they've assembled to a family gathering that they're 25:01.640 --> 25:03.760 not a part of. 25:03.760 --> 25:05.800 Huge pitfall. 25:05.800 --> 25:08.000 Then there's what I call an incestual audience. 25:08.000 --> 25:12.400 An incestual audience will be where other people who are presenting before or after 25:12.400 --> 25:14.200 you are in the audience. 25:14.200 --> 25:18.280 In other words, you have a round table set up where I'm up here speaking but all that 25:18.280 --> 25:22.520 you're really here for is to speak. 25:22.520 --> 25:27.280 It's got no real paradigm for people interacting with each other. 25:27.280 --> 25:30.320 Each of you are here because it's going to be your turn and you're going to come up and 25:30.320 --> 25:31.880 okay and so on. 25:31.880 --> 25:33.560 Some of you might take pointers. 25:33.560 --> 25:35.960 At that point, you're pretty much playing to this camera. 25:35.960 --> 25:40.000 You're playing to do the presentation or to put an extra line on your resume to say you 25:40.000 --> 25:42.000 gave a presentation at a convention. 25:42.000 --> 25:47.000 Much more effective at saying convention than hacker convention. 25:47.000 --> 25:50.200 Then there's a required speech. 25:50.200 --> 25:56.720 By that I mean a speech where you are a person who has to give these speeches or they're 25:56.720 --> 25:59.400 an audience that has to attend your speech. 25:59.400 --> 26:05.160 For instance, Dan Kaminsky who is a hit on the hacker circuit gives talks that are essentially 26:05.160 --> 26:06.160 requirements. 26:06.160 --> 26:11.920 In other words, their audience is going to be there because their employers have said, 26:11.920 --> 26:16.400 oh, if you've got to go, you've got to attend Dan Kaminsky's speech. 26:16.400 --> 26:21.520 You sit into Dan Kaminsky's speech and you get his ramblings which have all sorts of 26:21.520 --> 26:26.480 information in them but are all jumbled and then you've done it. 26:26.480 --> 26:29.240 Check it off and you move on. 26:29.240 --> 26:31.120 That's a whole different audience in its own. 26:31.120 --> 26:36.520 You're going to see all sorts of those kind of speeches this weekend. 26:36.520 --> 26:39.960 Like I said, how many of you are presenting at this thing this year? 26:39.960 --> 26:45.080 That's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven out of the 20. 26:45.080 --> 26:46.080 You are the people who I want. 26:46.080 --> 26:49.560 I know one or two of you are first time for this. 26:49.560 --> 26:54.400 I know that you didn't expect to walk into this room for my speech and make it sound 26:54.400 --> 26:57.640 like you were being prepared for a skydive. 26:57.640 --> 26:59.160 I'm not trying to give that impression. 26:59.160 --> 27:03.560 I'm not saying and if you fuck it up, you are screwed. 27:03.560 --> 27:09.760 Not a con does not appreciate an unforthright dishonorable presentation. 27:09.760 --> 27:11.760 No, actually we absorb them. 27:11.760 --> 27:12.760 We love them. 27:12.760 --> 27:17.720 But I want it that you don't just think of the way things are done here or whatever as 27:17.720 --> 27:19.000 being the only way to do it. 27:19.000 --> 27:26.280 And I also sometimes run into people who, again, they think of the speech as a requirement 27:26.280 --> 27:31.680 to get it free, very mercenary, or they think of it as I have to get all this information 27:31.680 --> 27:36.440 out in 40 minutes or nobody will ever understand everything I'm trying to say here. 27:36.440 --> 27:42.920 And then of course there's all the Alexander Technique performance issues which I'm of 27:42.920 --> 27:44.400 course parodying here. 27:44.400 --> 27:53.640 The Alexander Technique is a school of learning that breaks down how your body language performs. 27:53.640 --> 27:54.640 I have gout. 27:54.640 --> 27:56.680 I have arthritis. 27:56.680 --> 27:59.480 So I walk with a certain kind of gait. 27:59.480 --> 28:05.400 And I've hunched my shoulders a certain way over the years and I've got a tendency to 28:05.400 --> 28:11.440 lean down and I've got a number of flaws in my presentation style which I sometimes fight 28:11.440 --> 28:14.000 and sometimes forget in the heat of the moment. 28:14.000 --> 28:18.920 All of these are messages to the audience whether a person wants to admit it or not. 28:18.920 --> 28:23.480 If a person can't look at you while he's talking, it gives the impression that they don't want 28:23.480 --> 28:25.280 to deal with you or they can't deal with you. 28:25.280 --> 28:31.280 If a person constantly looks around a lot, it almost starts to give kind of a bizarre 28:31.280 --> 28:35.080 vibe because it's like what are you doing? 28:35.080 --> 28:36.880 Why are you trying to sell this? 28:36.880 --> 28:41.880 But then you have people who will do kind of a half thing where they're here and they're 28:41.880 --> 28:46.280 doing something and they're like okay wait, wait, wait, wait, and they're performing an 28:46.280 --> 28:51.560 awesome show to these patterns. 28:51.560 --> 28:54.760 And these patterns are getting an awesome show and if you were to lie down and be like 28:54.760 --> 28:56.360 this you'd get a great show from the guy. 28:56.360 --> 29:00.840 You'd have all of the dynamicism that you would expect from a show. 29:00.840 --> 29:05.440 But all of these are things that places like Alexander Technique which if you, now that 29:05.440 --> 29:08.000 I've said that word to you, you could look it up. 29:08.000 --> 29:12.360 It's basically the person sits with you and says you've done this wrong, you've done this 29:12.360 --> 29:13.360 wrong, you've done this wrong. 29:13.360 --> 29:15.080 Now try to hold your arm this way. 29:15.080 --> 29:16.600 Now try to do this. 29:16.600 --> 29:22.760 And you learn the language that your body gives and it's very effective for presentations 29:22.760 --> 29:26.720 and picking up the opposite sex. 29:26.720 --> 29:30.120 It's a case of looking at the full message. 29:30.120 --> 29:38.520 Like I said, that second message, that second presentation that you're given. 29:38.520 --> 29:42.960 I'm a big fan of something I call deeds not words. 29:42.960 --> 29:47.400 If you have somebody who just tells you about stuff but doesn't show you anything, in other 29:47.400 --> 29:51.880 words I'm giving a presentation about giving a presentation in which I am showing you how 29:51.880 --> 29:54.040 I give a presentation and knock it down. 29:54.040 --> 29:56.000 I'm trying to show you something. 29:56.000 --> 30:01.600 I'm trying to give you something that I couldn't give if I just wrote out a couple of paragraphs 30:01.600 --> 30:02.600 on some page. 30:02.600 --> 30:07.640 If I said oh yeah you should engage the audience with no impression of what that means for 30:07.640 --> 30:08.800 me. 30:08.800 --> 30:13.440 I'm a certain style and I think that's the other thing to pull away from. 30:13.440 --> 30:14.440 I'm a certain style. 30:14.440 --> 30:16.280 I'm a bombastic person. 30:16.280 --> 30:18.880 I don't need amplification. 30:18.880 --> 30:21.920 I don't need to have a microphone in my face. 30:21.920 --> 30:24.400 I don't like PowerPoint. 30:24.400 --> 30:26.440 I don't like podiums. 30:26.440 --> 30:28.920 I like being here in front of you. 30:28.920 --> 30:31.880 This is a certain kind of person who does that. 30:31.880 --> 30:39.960 Usually they want you to give them all of your money and then die because they're trying 30:39.960 --> 30:43.720 to emotionally pull you in to what's going on. 30:43.720 --> 30:48.160 I happen to be a rather emotional person so I happen to use this. 30:48.160 --> 30:54.240 If you're not an emotional person the whole point of the podium is to protect your body. 30:54.240 --> 30:58.640 Your nads are completely protected from the audience. 30:58.640 --> 31:01.600 They can't get it with their magic audience rates. 31:01.600 --> 31:12.920 Now you are a cyborg, a half machine, half person entity able to present a tron to the 31:12.920 --> 31:15.440 audience and that's fine. 31:15.440 --> 31:19.840 If you're not comfortable being out there or you think it's kind of weird or you think 31:19.840 --> 31:22.720 you're blocking the screen this is fine. 31:22.720 --> 31:30.320 Your voice which is very quiet will be amplified so you'll say by God this bios is amazing 31:30.320 --> 31:36.760 to watch and people will go wow he's really into it. 31:36.760 --> 31:40.840 This is all coded messages and part of the people. 31:40.840 --> 31:43.840 Are you doing that on purpose? 31:43.840 --> 31:44.840 No? 31:44.840 --> 31:45.840 Awesome. 31:45.840 --> 31:46.840 That's the point. 31:46.840 --> 31:51.880 I'm just standing here and it's blocking in and out. 31:51.880 --> 31:53.400 I don't have that problem. 31:53.400 --> 31:55.000 Next person here will have that problem. 31:55.000 --> 32:01.240 When something goes wrong with your presentation you can really tell the character of a presenter 32:01.240 --> 32:06.280 how comfortable they are with the material because if that stops working what happens? 32:06.280 --> 32:09.000 Have they lost their one and only crutch? 32:09.000 --> 32:10.360 What if their projector goes out? 32:10.360 --> 32:12.080 Can they still be engaging? 32:12.080 --> 32:13.680 What happens if everything is stripped down? 32:13.680 --> 32:14.960 What if the lights don't work? 32:14.960 --> 32:15.960 What if we're not here? 32:15.960 --> 32:19.720 At what point do you say okay we can't do this anymore? 32:19.720 --> 32:22.160 There's no such level for me. 32:22.160 --> 32:25.920 Every solid radon gas would do it I think. 32:25.920 --> 32:29.040 Good gassing of the audience that probably stopped me dead. 32:29.040 --> 32:36.520 But other than that I can just keep going because the material doesn't require it. 32:36.520 --> 32:42.560 Some material requires it and I understand that but if you are so dependent on your material 32:42.560 --> 32:48.360 that there's no you the audience will notice that and the question they'll ask again internally 32:48.360 --> 32:50.960 subconsciously is why? 32:50.960 --> 32:52.680 Why am I here? 32:52.680 --> 32:54.640 Why is this guy talking? 32:54.640 --> 32:57.800 Why aren't I getting drunk? 32:57.800 --> 33:03.840 Because they're asking themselves fundamental questions you forgot to ask. 33:03.840 --> 33:12.160 So at the end of the day the purpose of a presentation is to inform, entertain, or pass 33:12.160 --> 33:14.840 time. 33:14.840 --> 33:21.880 I happen to think the past time one is so great and I've spent a lot of time passing 33:21.880 --> 33:27.120 time through conventions and when you work on your presentations you say to yourself 33:27.120 --> 33:29.000 am I doing this to inform? 33:29.000 --> 33:30.000 Am I doing it to entertain? 33:30.000 --> 33:32.600 Am I doing it to pass time? 33:32.600 --> 33:33.600 Why am I doing it? 33:33.600 --> 33:36.840 Am I just doing it because I need to get through? 33:36.840 --> 33:41.320 As you progress through the various levels to get to the end level boss of presentations 33:41.320 --> 33:46.200 which is basically president you end up having different motivations. 33:46.200 --> 33:48.160 You end up having people who will pay you. 33:48.160 --> 33:51.120 I've been flown to Europe to speak. 33:51.120 --> 34:00.160 I've been paid in products or honorariums or I've been brought in to speak and I'm 34:00.160 --> 34:08.400 sitting next to the guy who invented hypertext or a version of it or I'm having dinner with 34:08.400 --> 34:14.600 this guy or I'm having dinner at one point I had dinner in a wonderful old club in England 34:14.600 --> 34:19.840 that had been there for hundreds of years that they took me on a tour. 34:19.840 --> 34:26.000 At that point I didn't care how well the speech went because I had already won on a personal 34:26.000 --> 34:27.000 level. 34:27.000 --> 34:31.160 I mean if you get there and you're like I just met five of my greatest idols just by 34:31.160 --> 34:32.160 being here. 34:32.160 --> 34:36.880 Now on the other hand maybe that inspires you to be a really good speaker because now 34:36.880 --> 34:40.840 you know these people are going to be there and you want to show them that you're worth 34:40.840 --> 34:45.120 their time because you're taking time from them especially if you convince them to sit 34:45.120 --> 34:50.200 in the room with you. 34:50.200 --> 34:53.200 I think that we're going to have some pretty entertaining speeches here and I think we're 34:53.200 --> 34:56.760 going to have some informative speeches and I also think we're going to have some passing 34:56.760 --> 35:02.600 time speeches and if you're trying to improve yourself I say the best thing to do is to 35:02.600 --> 35:08.720 stand back a little bit if you find you quote unquote bored or disengaged and say what are 35:08.720 --> 35:09.720 they doing wrong? 35:09.720 --> 35:12.560 Why don't I like this speech? 35:12.560 --> 35:13.560 What's wrong here? 35:13.560 --> 35:14.560 Why? 35:14.560 --> 35:15.560 What are they doing? 35:15.560 --> 35:17.240 Are they doing anything wrong? 35:17.240 --> 35:19.480 Sometimes they're not doing anything wrong. 35:19.480 --> 35:25.120 The presenter Seth Hardy has a technique he uses which is he puts up a bottle of alcohol 35:25.120 --> 35:31.600 and explains that he's going to drink from it for the entire con speech until he is drunk 35:31.600 --> 35:36.480 and what that does on one level is entertain but what it also does is it sets up a plot 35:36.480 --> 35:41.480 line and it sets up a contest and I'm sure he doesn't think of it that way but it's 35:41.480 --> 35:42.960 essentially a contest. 35:42.960 --> 35:45.960 Can he finish the speech before he falls over? 35:45.960 --> 35:50.840 And he will provide drinks to the audience members for answering good questions. 35:50.840 --> 35:51.840 Instant engagement. 35:51.840 --> 35:57.560 In other words, even the most silly clowning around on a speech has its own purpose and 35:57.560 --> 35:59.360 its own effects. 35:59.360 --> 36:05.000 And so tomorrow it starts. 36:05.000 --> 36:10.840 At noon we have the first of all presentations, the welcome here, and then we have a series 36:10.840 --> 36:16.040 of speeches including my own tomorrow and then again on Saturday ending up with the 36:16.040 --> 36:20.800 final presentation of prizes and goodbyes on Sundays and you will have an opportunity 36:20.800 --> 36:28.020 to see this in action and you will have an opportunity to do it yourself in the case 36:28.020 --> 36:33.840 of seven or eight of you assuming you don't run out of the building now. 36:33.840 --> 36:39.160 And I look forward to seeing your approaches and I look forward to seeing some of what 36:39.160 --> 36:44.960 I've said have an effect and I look forward to hearing what you have to say with me in 36:44.960 --> 36:52.720 the position that you're in now and hopefully feeling that I too was given value, worth 36:52.720 --> 36:53.720 and time. 36:53.720 --> 36:58.480 Thank you very much. 36:58.480 --> 37:10.200 If anyone has any questions about this, anything that comes to mind, just to give a little 37:10.200 --> 37:18.400 bit of the back story, I wrote this speech 20 minutes ago, but 20 minutes before the 37:18.400 --> 37:25.120 start of it, but that's very misleading because I don't start thinking about it 20 minutes 37:25.120 --> 37:26.120 ago. 37:26.120 --> 37:32.440 I compose pieces in my mind for months beforehand and then I quietly assemble the pieces and 37:32.440 --> 37:36.480 say maybe this audience doesn't need this, maybe this audience needs to hear this. 37:36.480 --> 37:39.200 In other words, I sit there and come up with it. 37:39.200 --> 37:45.200 So after I do that, I create a small page. 37:45.200 --> 37:49.200 Usually I didn't have a chance to do a revision, this would normally be one 8.5 by 11 sheet 37:49.200 --> 37:52.960 of paper which has a series of words on them. 37:52.960 --> 37:58.600 So it will simply say introverted, self-awareness, performance and all of them are touchstones 37:58.600 --> 37:59.840 for me. 37:59.840 --> 38:03.280 A lot of people don't like that approach. 38:03.280 --> 38:07.680 You got to really know your subject to be comfortable with a series of nine words to 38:07.680 --> 38:11.760 carry your lame ass through 45 minutes and that's fine. 38:11.760 --> 38:17.200 A lot of people write outlines for themselves or, and this bothers me a lot, they use the 38:17.200 --> 38:20.520 PowerPoint as their presentation. 38:20.520 --> 38:23.040 I hate that. 38:23.040 --> 38:24.040 I fucking hate that. 38:24.040 --> 38:30.120 I hate it more than watching my pets being killed because you're watching a person who 38:30.120 --> 38:38.800 is sitting with you reading his own notes and it's an instant buzzkill, an instant disengagement. 38:38.800 --> 38:40.640 Anyway, that's how I do it. 38:40.640 --> 38:44.640 I don't suggest that for everyone, that just happens to work for me, it works for a few 38:44.640 --> 38:45.920 other people. 38:45.920 --> 38:54.320 Other ways that people do it besides doing that is to have a series of notes for themselves 38:54.320 --> 39:01.680 on their computer and not have a presentation or they just friggin' wing it. 39:01.680 --> 39:06.360 And some people can really get along with just winging it. 39:06.360 --> 39:07.360 Not many. 39:07.360 --> 39:10.360 I mean, you know, at that point they're a clown. 39:10.360 --> 39:13.360 Anyway, any questions? 39:13.360 --> 39:14.360 Yes? 39:14.360 --> 39:42.560 Base, do you want to answer that? 39:42.560 --> 39:48.160 All you're doing is prove to them that you wrote code. 39:48.160 --> 39:51.360 That's the entire point of information that's 39:51.360 --> 39:52.800 going to come from that. 39:52.800 --> 39:55.680 In other words, I gave a presentation 39:55.680 --> 39:58.600 where I showed code on my Twittering account, 39:58.600 --> 40:01.080 Sockington the Cat, where I showed the script that 40:01.080 --> 40:02.680 generates Sockington. 40:02.680 --> 40:06.960 And its purpose was just to go, I made a script, 40:06.960 --> 40:09.720 and the script does this. 40:09.720 --> 40:12.640 But every time you put something up on the screen, 40:12.640 --> 40:14.200 it's a message to the audience to say, 40:14.200 --> 40:15.840 and you should read this. 40:15.840 --> 40:17.480 But they can't read code. 40:17.480 --> 40:20.840 Not if it's going to be 40 lines. 40:20.840 --> 40:24.080 But if what you're really saying is, we did this, 40:24.080 --> 40:28.640 and with one small effect, we got this great effect. 40:28.640 --> 40:31.280 And you show two lines. 40:31.280 --> 40:33.640 And you're like, we were able to just do this. 40:33.640 --> 40:34.960 Then you've passed along to them, 40:34.960 --> 40:36.840 this is a small piece of information. 40:36.840 --> 40:37.800 It uses this. 40:37.800 --> 40:39.600 And it did this thing afterwards. 40:39.600 --> 40:42.840 In other words, it's being used as a talisman. 40:42.840 --> 40:49.520 A lot of people, we had some presentation here, 40:49.520 --> 40:52.320 one of you did it, I think, where somebody put up 40:52.320 --> 40:53.120 something. 40:53.120 --> 40:56.080 They put up a slide here that I counted. 40:56.080 --> 40:58.560 It had 55 lines. 40:58.560 --> 41:00.360 And it was small as shit. 41:00.360 --> 41:03.240 I mean, each thing was here, which 41:03.240 --> 41:04.640 was awesome on your laptop. 41:04.640 --> 41:06.680 But as soon as you broadcast it, it just 41:06.680 --> 41:09.080 looks like big fuzzy crap. 41:09.080 --> 41:11.280 And it's information. 41:11.280 --> 41:13.600 I mean, it's actual information of like, oh, here's this, 41:13.600 --> 41:15.040 this, this, this, this. 41:15.040 --> 41:17.760 And it looks good here, but it looks terrible on the screen, 41:17.760 --> 41:22.080 because the audience just gets hit with this cinder block. 41:22.080 --> 41:25.840 And they just go, all right. 41:25.840 --> 41:30.160 It's like showing somebody all the architecture plans going, 41:30.160 --> 41:31.280 get it. 41:31.280 --> 41:35.760 And they're like, yeah, you made architecture plans. 41:35.760 --> 41:39.200 So code, if there's something that's unique about your code 41:39.200 --> 41:40.760 that you want to get across to people, 41:40.760 --> 41:44.360 I would focus on the formulas or the very specific pieces. 41:44.360 --> 41:47.240 But just to go, I wrote a big thing of code, 41:47.240 --> 41:50.520 unless there is an exception to this, 41:50.520 --> 41:53.960 to go, I made all this code, and then you immediately 41:53.960 --> 41:57.600 show the result of the code. 41:57.600 --> 41:59.120 Then you could see that. 41:59.120 --> 42:00.640 It's like, oh, look at all this code. 42:00.640 --> 42:02.080 And then we finished our project, 42:02.080 --> 42:03.720 and this is what the project looks like. 42:03.720 --> 42:05.520 So a person goes, oh, look at that. 42:05.520 --> 42:07.520 It's essentially like showing somebody 42:07.520 --> 42:11.120 a photograph of all these people assembling wood. 42:11.120 --> 42:12.960 And then the next shot is a house. 42:12.960 --> 42:13.920 You go, oh, of course. 42:13.920 --> 42:14.760 You don't have to sit there and go, 42:14.760 --> 42:16.480 like, god, what kind of load bearing are they using? 42:16.480 --> 42:17.960 What are they doing with all this stuff over here? 42:17.960 --> 42:20.320 Has anybody thought about the OSHA requirements? 42:20.320 --> 42:24.040 All they've done is, oh, people made a house. 42:24.040 --> 42:26.160 And it's much more effective. 42:26.160 --> 42:28.880 If you want people to read the code, 42:28.880 --> 42:32.840 you make it on a website and make a big, fat link 42:32.840 --> 42:34.360 while you're answering questions. 42:34.360 --> 42:36.440 When people go there, you go, I did this, I did this, 42:36.440 --> 42:37.880 and here's all the code. 42:37.880 --> 42:42.080 Or if you don't want people to know about the code, 42:42.080 --> 42:44.200 you're essentially showing it to them just for a moment 42:44.200 --> 42:47.320 to go, yes, we worked really hard on it, and we did this. 42:47.320 --> 42:49.600 And that way, they get, oh, I get it. 42:49.600 --> 42:50.920 There was a lot of stuff. 42:50.920 --> 42:52.160 That's my personal opinion. 42:52.160 --> 42:54.880 I think that a lot of presentations 42:54.880 --> 42:58.760 think that they both underestimate and overestimate 42:58.760 --> 42:59.560 their audience. 42:59.560 --> 43:01.360 They underestimate that the audience will 43:01.360 --> 43:03.240 understand basic concepts. 43:03.240 --> 43:04.480 I'm on a computer. 43:04.480 --> 43:07.240 A computer is a device that provides information. 43:07.240 --> 43:09.240 And then a little bit later, they'll be like, 43:09.240 --> 43:12.200 here is a 80 by 25 block of text that I'm 43:12.200 --> 43:13.640 going to show you for 20 seconds, 43:13.640 --> 43:14.640 and you will memorize it. 43:14.640 --> 43:18.120 So you'll get my point three slides down. 43:18.120 --> 43:19.360 So it can go either way. 43:19.360 --> 43:20.160 So that's my take. 43:20.160 --> 43:21.960 Didn't we just clap for you? 43:21.960 --> 43:24.560 I'm answering questions, bitch. 43:24.560 --> 43:26.760 See, he is what we call a heckler. 43:26.760 --> 43:28.960 Now, various people have different ways to do it. 43:28.960 --> 43:31.320 Heckling is an integral part of not a hackler. 43:31.320 --> 43:33.520 It's a staff member, right? 43:33.520 --> 43:35.840 And that depends on the definition of staff. 43:35.840 --> 43:37.200 Maybe I'm just happy to do it. 43:37.200 --> 43:39.680 Give me a moment, and I'll show you a staff member. 43:39.680 --> 43:40.600 All right, here we go. 43:40.600 --> 43:44.360 So this is how they do it for techers. 43:44.360 --> 43:47.440 Yeah, I had anonymous heckle me at Raffle Thing. 43:47.440 --> 43:49.520 And my solution was to pull one of them up on stage 43:49.520 --> 43:50.800 and kiss him. 43:50.800 --> 43:54.840 And that was a much more effective way to knock them down. 43:54.840 --> 43:56.400 This sure didn't work with me. 43:56.400 --> 43:57.760 No, it never works with you. 43:57.760 --> 43:58.560 Did somebody else have a question? 43:58.560 --> 43:59.440 Yes. 43:59.440 --> 44:02.760 How do you know if you're out to inform, 44:02.760 --> 44:04.680 how do you know you have too much material, 44:04.680 --> 44:06.720 or how do you know you have too little? 44:06.720 --> 44:08.960 How do you know you have too much or too little? 44:08.960 --> 44:10.960 Besides running over or running short, 44:10.960 --> 44:12.080 which really doesn't help. 44:12.080 --> 44:13.080 Well, it sort of does. 44:13.080 --> 44:13.680 OK, so. 44:13.680 --> 44:15.440 It's a guideline. 44:15.440 --> 44:17.560 In other words, people who walk into a speech. 44:17.560 --> 44:20.040 We've had people here, and I've seen them elsewhere, 44:20.040 --> 44:21.760 where they walk in to do a speech, 44:21.760 --> 44:25.400 and they've been allocated 15 minutes, and they do 12. 44:25.400 --> 44:26.080 OK? 44:26.080 --> 44:28.640 That is a huge fuck you to the audience. 44:28.640 --> 44:30.520 You've told them that they have to go up the stairs, 44:30.520 --> 44:33.480 come out of their room, come on down, come here, sit down, 44:33.480 --> 44:36.720 and I am going to basically sing the Facts of Life theme song 44:36.720 --> 44:38.520 to you, and then we're done. 44:38.520 --> 44:42.960 And that person's going to be like, what? 44:42.960 --> 44:44.800 OK. 44:44.800 --> 44:45.560 All right. 44:45.560 --> 44:49.640 And they'll say something which pulls the curtain up immediately 44:49.640 --> 44:51.720 that they're fully aware of this. 44:51.720 --> 44:53.760 They'll say, yeah, that's kind of all I had to say 44:53.760 --> 44:55.720 about this thing, so if anyone wants to give me. 44:55.720 --> 44:57.040 And their voices are always low. 44:57.040 --> 44:58.640 And I have to do this, so if anyone 44:58.640 --> 45:00.760 wants to ask any questions, I can type it out. 45:00.760 --> 45:03.120 OK, no one does. 45:03.120 --> 45:04.080 And they leave. 45:04.080 --> 45:08.280 That, to me, is just a huge insult. 45:08.280 --> 45:11.960 I think it's a case of, like, you 45:11.960 --> 45:15.200 have some places that have a cultural expectation. 45:15.200 --> 45:17.040 Things that were wild and willy here. 45:17.040 --> 45:18.000 Very enjoyable, right? 45:18.000 --> 45:20.200 You'll get somebody who's a drunk asshole in the back 45:20.200 --> 45:21.320 who's just screaming at you. 45:21.320 --> 45:22.280 And it's kind of funny. 45:22.280 --> 45:23.520 And you've got to deal with it. 45:23.520 --> 45:26.560 And you've got other places where the audience is just not 45:26.560 --> 45:27.360 paying attention to you. 45:27.360 --> 45:28.280 They're not looking at you. 45:28.280 --> 45:28.860 They're Twittering. 45:28.860 --> 45:30.400 They're doing laptop stuff. 45:30.400 --> 45:31.600 And that's fine. 45:31.600 --> 45:33.960 You're all kind of sharing experience. 45:33.960 --> 45:35.560 They don't care how much you talk. 45:35.560 --> 45:40.120 But if you find that your goal is 45:40.120 --> 45:44.920 to transfer some body of knowledge to people, 45:44.920 --> 45:47.720 I honestly think that most speeches work better 45:47.720 --> 45:50.280 as pointers to bodies of knowledge. 45:50.280 --> 45:53.160 If I go off on a 15 minute rant on the Alexander technique, 45:53.160 --> 45:56.080 I feel like I could go off on this whole thing 45:56.080 --> 45:59.920 and three or four people are like, oh, it's kind of interesting. 45:59.920 --> 46:01.880 And the rest of the people are like, wow, this 46:01.880 --> 46:03.680 is not what I signed up for. 46:03.680 --> 46:07.440 And so I listen to the audience, too. 46:07.440 --> 46:12.120 This is also a weird thing that comes from my improv days, 46:12.120 --> 46:15.200 where I can feel an audience so that I 46:15.200 --> 46:17.640 can tell when they're starting to kind of lose it. 46:17.640 --> 46:20.720 And sometimes I might be intentionally going further. 46:20.720 --> 46:22.760 So I'm like, oh, what's going to happen now 46:22.760 --> 46:24.000 if I really push this one? 46:24.000 --> 46:24.640 What are they going to do? 46:24.640 --> 46:25.960 Are they going to start to really slump? 46:25.960 --> 46:27.040 Are they going to do this? 46:27.040 --> 46:30.280 You watch the people slumping. 46:30.280 --> 46:32.120 But again, this comes after dozens of speeches. 46:32.120 --> 46:35.160 You start to notice when people, like if you worked in radio, 46:35.160 --> 46:37.120 after a while you don't have to look at the clock 46:37.120 --> 46:40.720 to do a 15 second presentation. 46:40.720 --> 46:42.400 You start to feel uncomfortable. 46:42.400 --> 46:44.560 You're like, oh, I think I'm buttoning up on 50 seconds. 46:44.560 --> 46:46.040 Oh, there we go. 46:46.040 --> 46:47.080 And you feel it. 46:47.080 --> 46:49.080 And similarly, you can say, oh, god, the audience 46:49.080 --> 46:51.440 is starting to feel like they're wrapping up here. 46:51.440 --> 46:51.940 Let's go. 46:51.940 --> 46:53.200 Fuck. 46:53.200 --> 46:54.680 When can I go? 46:54.680 --> 46:57.520 We're here about now. 46:57.520 --> 46:59.760 I mean, it's about 6 or 7 of you that need to go. 46:59.760 --> 47:01.360 But you're wanting to see what the fuck head's 47:01.360 --> 47:02.760 going to do at the top of the screen. 47:02.760 --> 47:05.600 And that's fine. 47:05.600 --> 47:08.160 I'm not bothered by people leaving. 47:08.160 --> 47:09.360 People do that all the time. 47:09.360 --> 47:10.120 And that's the thing. 47:10.120 --> 47:11.440 You can't let that kind of stuff. 47:11.440 --> 47:13.160 You can't embarrass people for leaving. 47:13.160 --> 47:14.560 They've got to go to the bathroom. 47:14.560 --> 47:16.760 They told their girlfriend they're going to go to 930. 47:16.760 --> 47:19.280 But they like you so much they want to at least hear 47:19.280 --> 47:20.960 20 minutes of you. 47:20.960 --> 47:23.640 And you're criticizing them for leaving early. 47:23.640 --> 47:25.960 You never know what people's motivations are. 47:25.960 --> 47:27.400 You can't treat them like that. 47:27.400 --> 47:29.080 They're not your toys. 47:29.080 --> 47:32.880 They're fun to play with, but they're not your toys. 47:32.880 --> 47:35.040 In terms of information, when you 47:35.040 --> 47:39.520 have people who are trying to get across a lot, 47:39.520 --> 47:41.280 I had Jerry Ellsworth last year speak 47:41.280 --> 47:45.920 about the creation of field programmable gatorades, which 47:45.920 --> 47:47.600 is an unbelievably dense subject. 47:47.600 --> 47:49.320 She spent years learning it. 47:49.320 --> 47:50.200 She's a professional. 47:50.200 --> 47:52.480 And she said, so should I give people basics? 47:52.480 --> 47:54.800 And I said, no. 47:54.800 --> 47:56.280 Fuck them. 47:56.280 --> 48:00.040 Do a talk on stuff you've discovered. 48:00.040 --> 48:03.600 Because it's too direct a subject. 48:03.600 --> 48:04.840 It's too much. 48:04.840 --> 48:07.000 In other words, field programmable gatorades 48:07.000 --> 48:09.160 assumes all this stuff. 48:09.160 --> 48:13.280 And for her to try to fit that in four minutes beforehand 48:13.280 --> 48:16.760 will not benefit the people who know what gatorades are. 48:16.760 --> 48:19.200 And it won't benefit the people who don't know. 48:19.200 --> 48:20.280 They'll be like, oh, cool. 48:20.280 --> 48:22.040 So once there was a rock, and now we're 48:22.040 --> 48:25.600 going to learn about Zor, it's just too much. 48:25.600 --> 48:26.840 And so I said, you know what? 48:26.840 --> 48:30.400 Do it so that you really push the people, the cool stuff 48:30.400 --> 48:32.640 you learned, way up where you are. 48:32.640 --> 48:33.160 And do it. 48:33.160 --> 48:34.720 That's for her, right? 48:34.720 --> 48:39.520 Now, the fat man gave a rambling poetic music 48:39.520 --> 48:41.040 filled speech last year. 48:41.040 --> 48:43.840 This is a man who has 25 years in the industry. 48:43.840 --> 48:47.440 He's giving a keynote tomorrow at a games development 48:47.440 --> 48:52.000 convention and told them, I had so much fun at Noticon. 48:52.000 --> 48:55.560 That I want to just give the keynote and leave. 48:55.560 --> 49:00.240 And so he's flying up tomorrow on my dime 49:00.240 --> 49:04.200 to get to this place so that he can give a speech with Jerry 49:04.200 --> 49:07.440 on Saturday. 49:07.440 --> 49:11.120 His speech was a rambling music filled piece. 49:11.120 --> 49:13.280 It kind of went in all these different directions. 49:13.280 --> 49:15.400 But this was a man who had such a pedigree. 49:15.400 --> 49:17.480 He did the music for Seventh Guest. 49:17.480 --> 49:19.680 He's the first time there's somebody who had Red Book 49:19.680 --> 49:22.360 audio on a video game. 49:22.360 --> 49:25.160 This is a guy who's got the history. 49:25.160 --> 49:27.080 So you're there to hear him. 49:27.080 --> 49:28.640 Doesn't matter what he says. 49:28.640 --> 49:29.520 Just listen to him go. 49:29.520 --> 49:31.880 And he had all sorts of cool insights and things. 49:31.880 --> 49:33.040 But it was all jumbled up. 49:33.040 --> 49:35.080 It was all very unusual. 49:35.080 --> 49:35.960 But it was a joy. 49:35.960 --> 49:40.040 It was a performance more than an information piece. 49:40.040 --> 49:41.680 I'm trying to think of my other presenters 49:41.680 --> 49:43.560 and the other people who I dealt with. 49:43.560 --> 49:46.480 I've had a few presenters who I've paid for. 49:46.480 --> 49:49.080 Had them come here, and they suck. 49:49.080 --> 49:50.480 Full of knowledge. 49:50.480 --> 49:52.840 Terrible presentation. 49:52.840 --> 49:54.440 But you take that risk. 49:54.440 --> 49:56.320 And they may or may not know that. 49:56.320 --> 49:58.080 I don't know if they do know that. 49:58.080 --> 50:01.360 You know who I'm talking to? 50:01.360 --> 50:03.240 Who just, you know, and because it's not their strong suit. 50:03.240 --> 50:04.480 But their information was good. 50:04.480 --> 50:07.600 Whatever came out of their mealy mouth, poor presentation 50:07.600 --> 50:09.440 was accurate. 50:09.440 --> 50:11.960 But it was not going to win over their audience, 50:11.960 --> 50:15.640 because it was a very dull piece. 50:15.640 --> 50:16.240 So I don't know. 50:16.240 --> 50:19.960 I think maybe audience is good for five to 10 pieces 50:19.960 --> 50:23.960 of information, if they're a good human audience. 50:23.960 --> 50:28.000 If there are crazy ass academic Google code bots, 50:28.000 --> 50:30.440 they're probably good for 15 to 20. 50:30.440 --> 50:32.280 Some of them are going to sit there and write 50:32.280 --> 50:33.360 notes on everything. 50:33.360 --> 50:34.880 So yeah, they can do infinite stuff. 50:34.880 --> 50:40.480 But now you are the world's worst fax machine. 50:40.480 --> 50:41.760 That's what you are. 50:41.760 --> 50:45.480 You're putting out information, and they're like, 50:45.480 --> 50:48.400 you're getting like 300 BPI there, 50:48.400 --> 50:49.920 I don't know, something around that. 50:49.920 --> 50:51.600 Real sucking, no high speed. 50:51.600 --> 50:54.200 So back and forth, there's a whole bunch. 50:54.200 --> 50:55.920 The reason I didn't just say five to seven 50:55.920 --> 50:57.960 is because it's all different. 50:57.960 --> 51:01.480 It could be one really good piece of information, right? 51:01.480 --> 51:03.280 Like the classic presentation of the strip show, 51:03.280 --> 51:07.720 where the one piece of information is, I'm nude. 51:07.720 --> 51:11.720 This guy wants a one bit presentation, but awesome. 51:11.720 --> 51:13.960 Awesome, look, I'll pay you now. 51:13.960 --> 51:17.520 And other ones are like, I am about to give you something. 51:17.520 --> 51:19.800 A good example is Andrew Weil's speech, 51:19.800 --> 51:24.560 where he was able to prove Fermat's theorem. 51:24.560 --> 51:31.480 And it was a very long speech, and he didn't complete it. 51:31.480 --> 51:34.960 Fermat's theorem had stood unproven for decades and decades, 51:34.960 --> 51:36.960 I think a couple hundred years, where he had just 51:36.960 --> 51:38.640 written something in a margin and written 51:38.640 --> 51:41.280 this little basic math thing. 51:41.280 --> 51:44.760 And nobody had been able to prove it. 51:44.760 --> 51:48.480 And a man named Andrew Weil spent seven years 51:48.480 --> 51:52.400 doing nothing else but working mathematically out 51:52.400 --> 51:53.940 to figure out how to prove the theorem. 51:53.940 --> 51:56.480 And he ultimately did it. 51:56.480 --> 51:58.020 There was a period when it looked 51:58.020 --> 52:00.520 like it wasn't quite accurate, but then he did it again. 52:00.520 --> 52:02.080 It looks like it might have a problem, 52:02.080 --> 52:04.080 no it doesn't have a problem. 52:04.080 --> 52:07.040 But for his presentation, he didn't tell people 52:07.040 --> 52:08.920 what he was going to do, and everyone showed up, 52:08.920 --> 52:10.800 and all the word was like, wow, Weil's 52:10.800 --> 52:13.120 up to something, Weil's has big news, 52:13.120 --> 52:14.880 Weil's is going to talk about it. 52:14.880 --> 52:17.800 And the way he presented it was he started out with the basics 52:17.800 --> 52:20.680 and just moved out over, I think it was an hour and a half, 52:20.680 --> 52:21.760 moving up, moving up. 52:21.760 --> 52:23.120 And you're like, wait a second, I 52:23.120 --> 52:25.800 think he's going in the realm of Fermat's, and he's doing this. 52:25.800 --> 52:28.800 And he hits up to the point where he's basically laid out 52:28.800 --> 52:32.080 both these pieces, and they're just got to, all you've got to do 52:32.080 --> 52:33.920 is do one more equation. 52:33.920 --> 52:36.520 And they click right in, and he got up to that point, 52:36.520 --> 52:40.280 and just went, I think I'll stop there for now. 52:40.280 --> 52:41.720 That was a showman. 52:41.720 --> 52:46.480 He really took his seven years, and it was a big freaking deal. 52:46.480 --> 52:48.400 Songs were written about him. 52:48.400 --> 52:51.440 He got in everything, and that was how he presented his info. 52:51.440 --> 52:53.840 He didn't feel he had to complete it. 52:53.840 --> 52:58.680 He just, total, total pimp. 52:58.680 --> 52:59.920 Any other questions? 53:03.640 --> 53:05.360 OK, thank you very much for your time. 53:05.360 --> 53:07.360 I'm going to be around for the entire convention. 53:07.360 --> 53:13.760 All right, if you have any questions, 53:13.760 --> 53:15.080 or anything like that. 53:15.080 --> 53:17.280 And I'm running BlockParty, so that's 53:17.280 --> 53:18.600 going to take a lot of my time. 53:18.600 --> 53:20.560 I hope some of you enter it. 53:20.560 --> 53:23.280 Feel free to look at demoparty.us. 53:23.280 --> 53:25.720 We also have a coders lounge. 53:25.720 --> 53:28.920 We actually have, due to something really weird, 53:28.920 --> 53:31.600 some free laptops to use. 53:31.600 --> 53:33.520 We were given a pile of laptops, so if you 53:33.520 --> 53:36.020 want to hack something out there and you don't have access, 53:36.020 --> 53:37.480 we can get it for you. 53:37.480 --> 53:40.040 And the winner of the demo competition 53:40.040 --> 53:42.360 gets a $1,000 machine. 53:42.360 --> 53:45.080 So it's worth it to you to take a shot at it. 53:45.080 --> 53:47.680 People have won more with less. 53:47.680 --> 53:49.120 Thanks again for your time. 53:49.120 --> 54:06.360 Thank you.